To all- please ping me to Canadian topics.
Canada Ping!
Posted on 04/05/2015 7:57:44 PM PDT by Squawk 8888
The other day I was at Trent University in Peterborough.
I was giving a talk on why student unions and political groups should be held accountable for their use of student and taxpayer money.
During the question-and-answer period, I inadvertently offended a bright young woman.
She’d suggested removing automatic student funds from political groups would remove political discourse from campus altogether.
Of course not, I responded.
I was a student activist who never received student money, yet was completely immersed in politics. Passionate people debate, regardless.
I said people like her, who are zesty and politically active ... Then I stopped.
She looked shocked and appalled.
I asked her: “Did you just get offended when I said ‘people like you’?”
“Yes,” she said. “I kind of did.”
Later, when a woman who’d interrupted others, including me, was interrupted by another young man, she asked him to please let her talk and “respect her safe space”.
These “bubble kids” aren’t toddlers. They’re university students.
University campuses have become sandboxes of political correctness and censorship, far removed from reality.
I was allowed to speak at Trent, but a group of students seeking to put up a “free speech wall” — a piece of paper on which students could write whatever they want — were banned, because “it can create an unsafe and inaccessible environment, particularly for students from minority groups,” according to the student union.
What’s more accessible than paper on which anyone can write anything?
While unfashionable speech is censored, it’s been replaced with a series of ever-changing trendy words.
It’s hard to keep up.
Since I visit campuses rather regularly, I’ll give you the scoop.
The concerning words to look out for now are: “trigger warning,” “trauma” and “safe space”.
At Ryerson University, two white student journalists were turned away from an event held by a “racialized” group funded by all students, because it was a “safe space." A journalism student wrote an op-ed defending the segregation, titled, “Ethnic minorities deserve safe spaces without white people."
At the University of Ottawa, a professor speaking about how “rape culture” affects men was heckled and insulted by protesting students until they finally pulled the fire alarm.
The students justified their actions saying the talk created an “unsafe atmosphere."
A similar debate was scheduled south of the border at Brown University around issues involving sexual assault.
A student proclaimed it might be “triggering” to some.
So, they set up a “safe space.”
The New York Times noted it was “equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.”
It’s no wonder recent graduates have created a market for “adult daycares,” one of which exists in New York, where adults pay up to $999-a-month to take naps and play with glitter glue.
“Safe spaces” imply that everywhere else is unsafe. They’re places where students can hide from ideas that might “trigger” them.
There are Canadians who have suffered actual trauma, and who continuously suffer trauma.
Brave soldiers, police officers — and yes, some students.
This new “trauma” trivializes that, and provides a loaded gun for censorship.
If an idea offends you, suck it up and challenge it, refute it out in the open.
If it’s a genuine trigger for trauma — a real mental health concern and violence risk — university administrators are obligated to uphold the law and ensure the campus is a safe space.
But university campuses shouldn’t be places where young people go to escape from the real world, coddled by blankets and puppies, shielding them from words.
They should be a free marketplaces of ideas, where new and differing points of view are encouraged and debated.
Otherwise, we’re compromising intellectualism; allowing adults to regress to childhood, plugging their ears and stomping their feet until the bad ideas go away.
And when they graduate — then what?
I have three scary words for, dare I say, people like this.
Get a grip.
To all- please ping me to Canadian topics.
Canada Ping!
I loved art class in our community college, especially graphic design. Our work was critiqued each week and I really looked forward to finding out how to make my work better.
Kids who get a trophy for playing don’t learn how to better themselves.
The New York Times noted it was “equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.”
Puppies are my trigger warning. What am I to do! And don’t get me started on Play-Doh.
University campuses have become sandboxes of political correctness and censorship, far removed from reality.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Was she pneumatic ?
Welcome to Brave New World.
Sorry libs. Thanks for making the world where coddled, candya** students can't take reality without having a conniption fit or shrinking into a fetal position all the while sucking their thumbs.
Bubble children don't like being offended.
These are the same people that think that shutting down government funding of the arts will absolutely and completely kill any and all forms of art in this country. They argue by saying things like, "What do you have against art?" and "If it weren't for art, the walls in your house would be bare and you'd have nothing of beauty in life." Yes, all art will die if the NEA can't keep sending grant money to unemployed loser "artists" that aren't good enough to sell their stuff in the marketplace and have to live on welfare under a different name.
My walls are covered with pictures of my young granddaughters. No "art" can compare to that beauty.
They’re not deserving of our respect unless they earn it and experienced enough life to understand pain and taxes. Don’t give people like that the time of day. They don’t deserve it.
When you read stuff like this, it makes you wonder if there isn’t a small something to The Taliban’s point of view.
I don’t think this kind of contrived fragility, or pressumption of weakness will last many more years.
They have become dangerously myopic and self centered.
This may be the end result of catering to two generations of Self Esteem gobbledygook.
Unbelievable.
The problem is compounded by helicopter parenting. They spend the first 18 years of their lives without having to deal with any crises then get bitch-slapped by reality.
“They’re not deserving of our respect unless they earn it and experienced enough life to understand pain and taxes. Don’t give people like that the time of day. They don’t deserve it.”
What these people have degenerated (or perhaps never actually generated into) is something like alcoholism. An alcoholic can’t exist for very long without enablers. Their parents, the professors, AND OURSELVES enabled this, some actively, some passively.
I believe at least to some part this situation can be explained by the dearth of jobs for people under 18. Oh, those jobs still exist, but adults (many with families!) have them. Or, they have been “legislated out” - for example, some of the jobs I did in high school would today definitely put the officers of the companies who signed my paycheck in prison.
I swear before god almighty, eternal hostility to those who can be “triggered”. I don’t care what happened to you, and how sad it was. I have NO obligation to tippy toe around and avoid every behavior that might make you think of something you don’t want to think about.
As Led Zep sang,,, “when your conscience hits you knock it back with pills,,,,”
So do that, go to therapy, stay indoors 24/7 with no electricity, I simply don’t care. But rest assured, if I know you have a trigger, I will try to pull it.
Freaking Jewish people with numbers tattooed on their arm are flying on Lufthansa to go on river cruises vacations down the Rhine and Danube. Men who shot it out on Iwo Jima show up in a Toyota to go in the McDonalds to drink coffee. Guys who slugged it out in Hue are walking into your local Vietnamese buffet. And Saints Preserve us,,,people in Hiroshima, at this very moment, are using a microwave and getting x-rays.
And you dare to tell me YOU have things that can “trigger” you?
As Snoop would say,,, “Bit@h Please”
So take your trigger warnings, and shove the right up your wazzoo,,,
while you are passed out drunk,
and didn’t consent,
all right there in your safe room,
with plush animals and playdoh,
at Brown university.
It’s time we embraced our right to live freely, and for the sensitive types to adjust to the world, not the other way around.
We have our 1984
I'm still not convinced this isn't a not-so-subtle insult for the chronically hypersensitive. If not, it ought to be.
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